A company is only as strong as its weakest customer relationship and mobile and social media are the perfect platforms to strengthen these relationships. By harnessing the power of the mobile platform, mobile users can make phone calls, send a tweet or fire off a text. Mobile users can IM a friend, "like" a business, surf the net, hail a cab, upload a blog, download a vlog, listen to a song, shoot a video, make a check deposit, play a game, shop online, shop offline (with a mobile coupon), check-in to a retail store, check out of a hotel, find a business's location or even track down a lost mobile phone. Mobile users can communicate with their friends via hold-to-talk voice messaging, they can stream their content feeds via one-to-many messages, share photos, videos, contacts, or broadcast their location. With today's mobile phone, making a voice call is almost the least important of its multitude of functions. Customer persona, Today, mobile apps, mobile banking, mobile commerce, mobile chat and mobile gaming have revolutionized the way people do business, seek entertainment and gamble. Mobile commerce has now evolved into what has become known as "omni-commerce", a seamless approach to selling that puts the shoppers experience first and foremost, giving that shopper access through multiple channels. Mobile marketing via Bluetooth, OTT, SMS, MMS, CSC or QR codes has become some of the most effective marketing available, while social media has turned the normal channels of marketing on its head. By accessing the Web through a wireless connection, mobile users can now surf the Internet almost as easily as if they were using a PC. Photos and videos can be uploaded seconds after they are shot, then shared with the most intimate of friends or the most distant of peoples with little more than the touch of a button. Connected via a Natural User Interface (NUI) applications like Apple's SIRI, Speaktoit's Assistant and Microsoft's Tellme services, mobile devices can become talking personal assistants that understand normal speech and connect to a vast world of data that can turn a mobile phone into a verbal business location finder, a weather reporter, an encyclopedia, an appointment maker, an email sender, and much, much more. The mobile platform is so robust and it holds so much promise that if a marketing executive had been asked to dream up the perfect device to connect to, market to and sell its company's products and/or services to its customers and potential customers, he could hardly have come up with something more superior to it. One of mobile's best features is its ability to cross-pollinate the marketing message through several mediums, which include social media and I will expound upon this throughout the book.
About the Author: Andrew Pearson was born in Pakistan, grew up in Singapore and was educated at boarding schools in England and America. With a degree in psychology from UCLA, Pearson has had a varied career in IT, marketing, mobile technology, social media and entertainment. In 2011, Pearson relocated to Hong Kong to open Qualex Asia Limited, bringing its parent company's experience into the ASEAN region. Pearson is currently the Managing Director of Qualex Asia Limited, a leading implementer of business intelligence, customer intelligence, data warehousing, data modeling, predictive analytics, data visualization, digital marketing, mobile, social media and cloud solutions for the gaming, insurance, finance, healthcare, oil and gas, telecommunication, hospitality and retail industries. Pearson has since opened Qualex Asia offices and is currently working on corporate deals in countries such as Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and Australia. In 2013, Pearson was invited to write a chapter in Global Mobile: Applications and Innovations for the Worldwide Mobile Ecosystem, a book on mobile technology. The book, which was co-authored by several of the mobile industry's leading figures, was published in July 2013. Pearson is also a noted columnist, writing on topics such as mobile media, social media and cloud technology for such publications as ComputerWorld HK, The Journal of Mobile and Social Media Marketing and The Mobile Marketer amongst others. An avid traveler, Pearson is a sought-after speaker on such disparate topics as casino and mobile marketing, predictive analytics, social media and interactivity. If he's not pounding the pavements of Hollywood, he's probably wandering the labyrinthine streets of Hong Kong's Lang Kwai Fong, or tearing up useless betting slips at Happy Valley (perhaps the most perfectly named racecourse in the world (for some)), or dining at a hawker center in Singapore, or doubling down at the gaming tables in Macau. Basically, Pearson's trying to find the next great story that the world doesn't yet know that it desperately wants to see. This book is Pearson's third book. The author's website-www.intelligentsia-media.com-continues the mobile and social media discussion and Pearson can be found in the social media world (Facebook, UShi, Twitter, LinkedIn, Viemo, Youtube, and sites that are growing by the month).